In the Year 2000

I recently had the pleasure of viewing Death Race 2000 for the first time. If you aren't a fan of B movies, you can stop reading right now. If you are a fan, this is definitely a must-see. It was made in 1975 and set in what was then the not-too-distant future and what is now the recent past. In the movie, the America of the year 2000 looks a lot like the America of 1975, except that the country is ruled by an absentee authoritarian regime headed by the inscrutable Mr. President and an annual coast-to-coast, no-holds-barred car race is the opiate of the masses. I didn't realize that it was a Roger Corman picture until the ending credits rolled, but in retrospect, I should have known from the ample amounts of T&A and completely unrealistic gore.

The movie has an unmistakable 1970s feel. The main character, Frankenstein (David Carradine), is the race favorite and the only current surviving champion. Frankenstein is a broken man, both physically and mentally, and a textbook 1970s anti-hero. His main rival, Joe "Machine Gun" Viterbo (Sly Stallone), is a tightly-wound ball of rage. The Resistance, an underground movement that is determined to stop the death race by any means necessary, fills the role of the progressive anti-establishment group. Rather than trying to explain how America wound up in such a sorry state, the movie makes allusions to works such as 1984 and assumes the viewer can fill in the details.

There's an interview with Roger Corman in the DVD extras. He makes a comment about how prophetic the movie turned out to be. I don't know exactly what he was talking about, but I will give him credit for a couple of things. The first is how Mr. President blamed the French for all of the acts of sabotage committed by the Resistance. I'm guessing that the blame the French meme existed before this movie was made, but the way that it was used was nearly identical the our last flare-up of anti-French hysteria during the run up to the Gulf war. The other thing that really stood out was how the political party that ruled the country was called the Bipartisan Party. That name reminded me of the "a pox on both their houses" sentiment that you often hear expressed by pundits and voters. I've always felt like that sentiment is much more common today than it was 30 years ago, so I'll give Corman some credit for that.

Vayama

I came across a relatively new travel website this week. It's called Vayama and it's targeted for international travelers. It seems to have some pretty good deals. We just booked a trip to Europe for early June and saved about 20% off of the prices we were seeing on other air travel websites. The interface could be better, but it's very web 2.0. They have a 3D seat selector that nearly brought my relatively powerful laptop to its knees, but it looks very cool. My other gripe is that, at least for our trip, there was about a 24 hour delay between clicking 'buy' and the itinerary getting ticketed. If you're planning some overseas travel and you don't mind playing the waiting game for a little while after selecting your trip, Vayama might be worth a look.

I Pity The Fool

We went out to AS220 on Tuesday night to catch a screening of I Pity the Fool, a film that explores the ruins of the city of Detroit. For as long as I can remember, Detroit has been like a car accident to me, I know that something horrible has happened but I can't take my eyes off of it. I didn't have really high hopes for the film, but I knew that I had to go see it.

Brent Coughenor, the director, was on hand to introduce the film and presumably answer questions after the screening. I say presumably because we left about 10-15 minutes before it ended. After reading this interview with Coughenor, I feel like we share a similar connection to and fascination with Detroit. We both grew up in the suburbs of Detroit in the 1980s, arguably the nadir of Detroit's long and continuing decline. Unfortunately, the movie didn't really strike a chord with me. It's neither a documentary nor a conventional narrative film. There's almost no dialog and no real characters. It's really more of a filmmakers film, though I have my doubts as to how compelling the cinematography really was.

Even though this film was shot on what I can only assume was a minuscule budget, there was a certain laziness about it that bothered me. There are a number of scenes that take place on sidewalks that were filmed from the other side of the street so passing cars go in and out of the frame throughout the scene. I realize that this project didn't have the kind of money or connections that it takes to get streets cordoned off, but I think that if I were a filmmaker working on a shoestring budget, I would have found a better way to get that shot. There's a sequence about half of the way through the film where one of the "characters" is suddenly at Cedar Point (an amusement park in Ohio, in case you weren't aware). As a once frequent visitor to Cedar Point, that scene had a lot of sentimental value for me, but I don't know how it was supposed to fit in to the film.

If it had only been a visual homage to the ruins of Detroit, I still would have enjoyed it, but it really wasn't all that interesting from a visual or architectural standpoint. The only scene that I really enjoyed is the one that is pictured in the Sifflbog interview. In that scene, a man leaves his house and begins riding his bike down the street. The camera follows him in profile as he rides along what starts out as a pretty nice looking neighborhood by Detroit standards. Soon, the neat row of houses fades away into a more typical Detroit scene of abandoned residential and industrial lots and empty streets. Finally, the man reaches the Michigan Central Station. As he rides around this gigantic hulk of building that is completely devoid of life and activity, you can really feel the isolation and decay that is so pervasive in Detroit.

I can only recommend this film to people like me who obsess over Detroit or people who have never seen the ruins of Detroit first-hand. It's hard for people who have never seen Detroit to fathom the scale of urban decay that has gone on nearly unchecked for the past half century. I had the opposite problem; it wasn't until I had a chance to visit some other big cities as a young man that I realized that not all urban centers were in a state of constant decay. If you want an introduction to Detroit and can't make it there for a visit, I think 8 Mile is a better choice, but if you want to support independent film, you may learn something about Detroit from I Pity The Fool.

Almost Famous

Today's Boston Globe had a story about Rhode Island's nascent high technology economy. There's not a lot of new information in this article, but it was nice to see the Providence Geeks get plenty of mentions. As I type, the picture on the front page of the Globe's technology section, which was taken at last week's geek dinner, features a nice view of my midsection (I'm wearing a blue shirt and holding a 16oz can of 'Gansett in my right hand).

Global Citizen

Back in the day, a friend and I wrote a series of absurd stories about a family that found themselves in ridiculous situations the world over. We would generally think of a ridiculous premise and give it an equally absurd setting. When we decided that one of the characters was to get gravely injured because he fell asleep in one of the cars that was to be destroyed at a demolition derby, we consulted an atlas to find what we thought was an unlikely place for this event and found a city in Romania named Cluj-Napoca. We had a good laugh and I never gave Cluj-Napoca a second thought, until today. I was doing some work and uncovered what appeared to be a bug in an open source library that I was using. I posted a description of the issue to the discussion forum for said piece of software and I soon received confirmation from one of the developers. When I saw in his profile that he was based in Cluj-Napoca, it jogged my memory and brought me back to the story I wrote a good 15 years ago. That's the great thing about the Internet - it gives you a chance to interact with people from the places around the world that you made fun of when you were a kid because you thought they had funny sounding names.

Too Fast To Live, Too Young To Die, Bye-Bye

While it's hard to listen to classic rock and oldies on the radio for too long without hearing a song by The Eagles, one Eagles song that you don't hear everyday is James Dean. It's off of their On the Border album, and I've probably only heard it a handful of times, but it's always been one of my favorite Eagles tunes. I heard it in the car yesterday and decided to see what else I could find out about the song and came across this loving James Dean tribute slideshow set to the tune.





It's just a really fun song. You don't have to be an Eagles fan or a James Dean fan to enjoy the tune.

The Queen of Mean

Today's installment of Mother Goose & Grimm is too strange not to comment on. After reading today's cartoon, I went back and read all of this week's strips to see if this was a one-off gag or the culmination of a plot that had been building all week. As I had suspected, it was a one-off, and my failure to find it funny had nothing to do with a lack of context. The strangeness of this strip begins by building a joke around Leona Helmsley. This might be the least timely comic strip ever penned. Helmsley was convicted of tax evasion back in 1992 and she died last year. Why did Mike Peters wait until now to joke about it?

As I've mentioned before, comic strip writers often times resort to tortured setups in order to cram a desired punchline into the final panel. Peters is going for an Exorcist/repossessed-possessed play on words joke, which is bad enough in and of itself, but using a reference to Leona Helmsley's putative dog to make that joke is stretching artistic license well beyond the breaking point. As if all that wasn't bad enough, the sloppy grammar in the first panel introduces an ambiguity regarding whose car was repossessed by the IRS. I realize that dogs can't own cars, but neither can the deceased. It's not like this joke would make any more sense if it was clear who the car belonged to. It's just another piece of evidence to suggest that Peters really mailed it in on this strip.

License to Drive

Growing up in the Detroit area, I thought I pretty much had seen it all when it came to people being obsessed with their cars. It wasn't until I moved out east that I learned about an automotive obsession that for whatever reason, never seemed to take hold in the motor city. The obsession I'm speaking of is the desire to have the smallest possible license plate number. I thought it was specific to Rhode Island, where license plate numbers can be (and often are) passed on to your descendants, but it's even more popular in Delaware, the only state that allows for easy license plate number transferals. Delaware license plate #6 just fetched $675,000 at auction, the most a license plate has ever sold for in the US. That may sound like a lot of money to pay for a license plate, but when you consider that Abu Dhabi's #1 license plate sold for the equivalent of $14.2 million last week, it seems like quite the steal.

Back to the Future

This post is probably the most interesting thing I've read about Kosovo's recent declaration of independence from Serbia. It's just one man's opinion, but often times, news stories gain a lot more poignancy when viewed through the lens of actual human experience instead of history, politics, economics, etc. More than anything else, his post reminded me of one of the things I like most about life in America. For the most part, we don't have to deal with these deep-seated ethnic and sectarian grudges. Our history is short and we're generally pretty ignorant of whatever history we have. While many a hand has been wrung over America's historical forgetfulness and incessant focus on the future, I think that overall, it's better to be too forward looking than too mired in the past.

Look Sharp

In case you haven't heard, The Sharper Image filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on Tuesday. My initial thought upon hearing this news was it's about damn time. For as long as I can remember, I've had nothing but contempt for The Sharper Image. I'm not entirely sure why. Could I really have been sophisticated enough as a 12 year old to realize that they sold a lot of overpriced junk to people who equated paying a lot of money for useless products with status? I guess so, and it's only taken the rest of America 20 years or so to catch up with me. I knew a guy in college who used to work at a Sharper Image store, but had to quit after he could no longer maintain the fiction that the products they carried were in any way useful and/or worth the price that they were charging. If only all of his co-workers had been so wise.

Exploding Star Orchestra

I just found out about the Exploding Star Orchestra, Rob Mazurek's new, for lack of a better term, avant jazz supergroup. Not to be confused with the Grateful Dead tribute band Dark Star Orchestra, the Exploding Star Orchestra is a a collection of Chicago-affiliated improvisers. The band includes musicians from just about every band in Chicago that I've been listening to over the past ten years. I've found that bands like this are never greater than the sum of their parts, because the sum of their parts is so incredibly large, but I am pretty impressed what little I've heard of the Exploding Star Orchestra so far.

Dictated but not Led

It's the middle of February again, which can only mean one thing. It's time for Parade magazine's annual survey of the world's worst dictators. I've come to accept the sheer absurdity of a magazine that only tangentially covers anything that could be considered world news the other 51 weeks of the year publishing an annual ranking of the world's worst dictators, so I don't have any additional criticism to offer about the concept. As for the results, let's take a look at the top 10.

1. Kim Jong-Il, North Korea: Kim finally grabbed the number one spot after finishing second the past two years. I can't really argue with this choice. In addition to his pure dictatorial bona fides, he's the only dictator who has a control group against which to compare his misrule. It's hard to say how much better (or worse) most countries would be without their current dictator, but it's pretty safe to say that had the Korean peninsula not been cleaved in two following World War II, the northern section of it would look a lot more like today's South Korea than today's North Korea.

2. Omar Al-Bashir, Sudan: No surprises here as well. I find it strange that Parade decided to mention that the Clinton administration imposed trade sanctions on Sudan in 1997 but exempted gum arabic (of which the US imports 4000 tons annually from Sudan). Are they trying to pin the blame for the Darfur genocide on the Clinton administration? Will leading right-wing websites pick up on this and start selling "No Blood for Gum Arabic" bumper stickers?

3. Than Shwe, Myanmar: He was the biggest mover in the top 5 (up 3 spots from last year's 6th place finish). I was kind of surprised, I figured he would have moved up even higher after last year's violent crushing of the saffron revolution.

4. King Abdullah, Saudi Arabia and 5. Hu Jintao, China: Abdullah and Hu swapped places in this year's poll. I still think Hu is somewhat out of place on this list. He's more of a caretaker than a dictator. Of course, he's the caretaker of a government that brutalizes its own people so he obviously is not without fault, but he will step down when his time comes and be replaced by someone else who will probably maintain the status quo, but it at least gives China a mechanism to gradually ease its way into becoming a freer society, which is more than most of the other people on this list can say.

6. Robert Mugabe, Zimbabwe: Mugabe moved up from 7th place last year. In terms of sheer venality, Mugabe should probably be in first place.

7. Sayyid Ali Khamenei, Iran: Khamenei wins the most improved dictator award, falling from third place last year all the way to seventh. This is obviously a result of the minor cooling off in the US versus Iran brinksmanship, but I'm still surprised to see Iran fall this far on the list.

8. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan: Musharraf cracked the top 10 once again after finishing a distant 15th last year. Musharraf is another strange selection. Though he did gain power through a bloodless coup, his regime has gained a modicum of electoral legitimacy and he did resign his military post at the end of last year. Musharraf is very middle-of-the-road as a dictator; Pakistan's instability and geostrategic importance are the reasons for his inclusion on this list.

9. Islam Karimov, Uzbekistan: Karimov moved down one spot from last year's poll, presumably because nothing good enough or bad enough to report happened in Uzbekistan last year.

10. Isayas Afewerki, Eritrea: Afekerki is the biggest surprise of this year's top 10, moving up from 13th last year. His ascension is probably due to Ethiopia's incursion into Somalia last year, which led to accusations of Eritrean support for the vanquished Islamist regime in Mogadishu (under the enemy of my enemy is my friend doctrine) and the resulting flare up in tensions along the volatile Ethiopia-Eritrea border.

The Rookie of the year was Cuba's Raul Castro, who finished 18th in his first full year behind the helm in Cuba. This highlights the key failing of this survey. The Castro regime is every bit as repressive as China, yet China finished 13 places ahead of Cuba. The difference, of course, is that China has the potential to harm the US economically and/or militarily, while Cuba does not. As I've said before, this list needs to decide what it wants to be, a ranking of the worst dictators in the world or a ranking of the worst dictators whose misrule could potentially impact the US.

Some other notable mentions include Belarus' Aleksandr Lukashenka, who at 16th place is Europe's only top 20 finisher, and the world's last reigning absolute monarch, King Mswati III of Swaziland. As if finishing 14th wasn't already bad enough, Parade incorrectly named Mswati the ruler of the nonexistent country of Equatorial Swaziland.

Red Bullshit

One thing I've seen a lot of while traveling abroad but never in the US is television screens on subway trains. I'm sure we'll eventually get them over here, but I'm in no hurry. I haven't minded them on my travels since it's always neat to notice the little differences between your home country and the place you are visiting and, more importantly, I've never been exposed to public transit broadcasting in an English-speaking country, so I couldn't really understand what was being said on TV anyway.

That being said, most public transit programming is commercials, so it's not that hard to understand. While riding the KCR in Hong Kong last November, we saw the following Red Bull commercial.



A few weeks ago, we saw the same commercial on American television. The US version features a different ending, as you can see here.



Michelle and I immediately noticed this difference. I assumed it was yet another example of American reactionary puritanism - bodily functions are sinful and evil but violence is ok. After reading the YouTube comments (hardly an authoritative source, I know), it sounds like Red Bull may have retooled the commercial between when we viewed it on the train in Hong Kong and on our couch in the US.

Roscoe

There's a squirrel named Roscoe who lives in our backyard. How do we know his name is Roscoe? We named him. How do we know that he's a boy? Wild guess. How do we know that it's him in our backyard and not some other squirrel that happened to wander over? No clue. I will note, however, that there is rarely more than one squirrel in our yard at any given time. If there are two, one of them is usually chasing the other away. It at least seems plausible that a squirrel's territory is roughly the size of our backyard (if squirrels are in fact territorial animals) and that we're usually seeing the same squirrel when we look out back.

I went into the garage one evening a few weeks ago and thought I heard an animal scurrying around. A few days later, Michelle discovered some piles of leaves arranged into a nest-like formation in the garage when she was taking out the trash. On Tuesday, she went into the garage and saw Roscoe and one of his friends inside. They ran to the back of the garage and either hid behind some sheeting or exited through some unknown crack in the wall or tunnel.

As cute as Roscoe is when he steals unripened pears from our pear trees and discards their remains in the grass after taking one squirrel-sized bite out of them, we don't really want him to use the garage as his crash pad. At the same time, I don't want this to turn into a man vs. rodent battle of Caddyshackian proportions. Attempting to squirrel-proof the garage is now on our list of President's Day weekend activities. The joys of homeownership.

Take it Easy

I've always heard that Easy Rider is masterpiece of American cinema. The AFI even went as far as naming it the 88th greatest movie of the 20th century. I watched it this weekend, and I'll have to respectfully disagree with the AFI on this one. I'll defer to fellow Netflix subscriber WR 323380, whose sentiments about the movie matched mine almost exactly. Maybe it was a great movie for its time, but I don't think it has aged very well at all.

Book Report

I like the A.V. Club, but it does have a lot of content that I wind up skipping over because I don't find it all that interesting. Two of the features that I never skip, however, are the weekly Ask the A.V. Club column and The Box of Paperbacks Book Club. Ask the A.V. Club is kind of like the Straight Dope, only entirely focused on obscure pop culture. People write in with vague descriptions of a movie they may have seen part of 25 years ago and the A.V. Club comes back with a detailed description of the movie. The Box of Paperbacks Book Club is a series of book reviews from A.V. Club editor Keith Phipps, who purchased a box of vintage paperbacks and has been reading them one at a time and writing reviews. He has yet to review a book that I've ever read, but being a used book store connoisseur, I have come across many tomes that remind me of the books he's been reading. I've always thought it would be kind of fun to read bad pulp and science fiction novels from the 1950s, but it's not an endeavor that I'm really willing to commit any time to, so it's nice that someone else is willing to do all of that reading for me and give me a snarky review. I've created a couple of Yahoo! Pipes feeds specifically for these features (see the links earlier in this post) if I've piqued your interested but you don't want to deal with sifting through all of the A.V. Club's daily content.

Gung Hay Fat Choy

November 16, 2007 | 2:15 pm | Hong Kong

Dear Sister

I don't how popular last season's Dear Sister SNL digital short was. It didn't seem to generate much buzz, but maybe I completely missed it. We saw it when it aired last season and thought it was hilarious. Check it out here if you missed it the first time. I didn't know this until I searched for it online, but I guess it's a parody of The O.C.. Don't let that prevent you from enjoying it.

Sex, Eyes, and Videotape

I caught a few minutes of the Today Show this morning while I was in the waiting room with Michelle before she went in to get her other eye zapped. They interviewed Eli Manning and Michael Strahan, and I thought Matt Lauer got a good question in when he asked Strahan if he was going to bring a camera to the Superbowl parade. Strahan replied that he was going to bring a video camera and added that he rarely video tapes anything besides his children. If it was the Jerry Springer show instead of the Today Show, this is the point where Strahan's ex-sister-in-law would have come onto the field cursing at Strahan while swinging a chair or perhaps a potted plant, but it wasn't so Lauer didn't pursue that line of questioning any further. For those of you who are not up-to-date on sports gossip, Strahan recently went through a messy divorce where accusations surfaced that he, among other things, secretly video taped his ex-wife's sister while she was undressing.

As for the eye surgery, it went very well once again. She's still recovering, but she's already seen a dramatic improvement.

Spam

We went to see Spamalot at PPAC last week. Neither of us found it to be all that funny. It wasn't horrible, but after seeing it, I can't really see what all of the fuss is about. I think my biggest problem was that while I've never been a huge fan of Monty Python, I've known a lot of people who found the troupe quite amusing and often interjected quotes from their skits and movies into conversations. A lifetime of this has exposed me to most of the jokes that were included in Spamalot, but since I never got to experience those jokes on my own terms, I really didn't appreciate seeing them done on stage set to music. Even worse, I've had the misfortune of meeting several Monty Python fans who happened to be rather annoying (imagine that), so the numbers that they did on stage sometimes reminded me of those people, which did nothing to enhance my appreciation of the performance. If you're a big Python fan, you'll probably enjoy it and you might like it if you've never really been exposed to their humour before. Otherwise, it's probably best to save your money. If you are on the fence, perhaps this timely article from the A.V. Club that names 20 pop culture obsessions ever geekier than Monty Python will help you put things in perspective.

It's my money, and I need it now

I am a connoisseur of the commercials that law firms (mostly personal injury outfits) run on local TV. Their flair for the dramatic and their production details put them in a league that local car dealers and merchants can only dream of. One of my current favorites is J.G. Wentworth's "It's my money, and I need it now!" campaign, currently in heavy rotation in Rhode Island. There's an article in today's ProJo about how some state judges are refusing to approve the lump sum payment for structured settlement deals that firms like J.G. Wentworth broker. The reasoning behind these decisions is that the companies are preying on the financially desperate by offering them lump sum payouts that can be as low as 40% of the total value of the settlement.

I'm certainly not shocked to find out that companies like J.G. Wentworth charge a fairly large premium for their services. It's hard to say whether or not what they're doing borders on usury, but it's obvious to anyone with a bit of economic sense that you're going to have to pay some sort of a premium if you really need your money right now. I don't really envy companies that provide financial services to the poor. While it's true that there are business built on the idea of fleecing the poor and desperate out of what little they have, there are plenty of legitimate business who have to face down charges of exploiting the poor because they need to account for the additional risk they are taking on in their fee structures. If companies are forced to provide financial services to marginal customers at the same rates as other customers, they will probably choose not to do business with poorer customers, and in the end, that hurts poor consumers more than it helps them.

While it's likely that many of the people who appear before Judge Vogel are not acting in their own financial best interest when they choose to convert a structured settlement into a lump sum payout, I don't think that the government should be in the business of preventing people from making bad financial decisions. I'll ignore the irony of the State of Rhode Island lecturing someone about their finances and point out that the state doesn't seem all that concerned about poor people wasting their money on the state lottery or at the state-sanctioned gaming houses in Newport and Lincoln.

Not My Job

This week's installment of Not My Job of NPR's news quiz show Wait Wait Don't Tell Me featured NFL quarterback and NPR listener Joey Harrington. Joey definitely cements his reputation as one of the NFL's more cerebral jocks with his appearance on the show. It's actually a pretty fun interview. You should definitely listen to it, if for no other reason than to hear Carl Kassell say "Joey's a winner" at the end of the show. It'll probably be a long time before someone utters those words again in the national media.

Superbowl of Blogging

Three of my favorite sports bloggers are at the Superbowl right now. That's great news for them and great news for bloggers in general, I suppose. At first, I was somewhat disappointed, since everyone was writing about the same stuff, none of which was all that interesting to me. The blogging soon became a lot more interesting. MJD and Will have mostly focused on slice-of-life Superbowl stories and outsider observations of the Superbowl media circus. MDS has taken a different approach and has apparently been attending every single press conference he has been able to get into and written some really interesting stuff about the Superbowl, the Hall of Fame, the player's union, and even next season. I've really enjoyed the variety of perspectives offered by these three bloggers, from MDS' investigative journalism to MJD's epic bowling matches against Matt Leinart and Derek Anderson, to Will's thoughts on media day. I hope the actual game is as interesting.

Eye of the Tiger

Against the advice of this blog, Michelle looked into a laser with one of her remaining eyes today. Fortunately, the laser she looked into was a excimer laser guided by the able hands of surgeon. In other words, she underwent Lasik eye surgery today, and so far, the results are pretty impressive. Even after coming out of surgery doped up on valium and with only one eye corrected (she'll get the other one zapped next week), she was able to see things that she never could have seen without her corrective lenses. We're still unsure exactly how many strokes the surgery is going to take off of her handicap.

Bad Dogs

Deadspin linked to this series of articles in the Seattle Times detailing the litany of felonies committed by the 2000 UW football team. Normally, I wouldn't read a four part series about anything that goes on at the University of Washington, but this is the team that trounced my alma matter in the 2001 Rose Bowl in front of my very eyes, so I figured I'd check it out. I thought I was cynical enough that another story about athletes behaving badly and getting special treatment from the authorities wouldn't surprise me, but these stories are something else. I don't know if I should feel worse that Purdue lost to these reprobates, or if I can at least take some pride in the fact that Purdue didn't have to stoop to such a low level to make it to the Rose Bowl (at least, until the West Lafayette Journal and Courier uncovers evidence that Drew Brees killed a hooker in his dorm room).

I must say that although at least some of the UW players were severely lacking in class and basic human decency, it didn't seem to extend to their fans. I traveled to and from the Rose Bowl that year from my base camp in Long Beach using only my legs and southern California public transit, believe it or not. I was riding a long-distance city bus from Pasadena into downtown LA after the game and it was one of most pleasant bus rides I've ever had. Most of the people on the bus were Purdue and UW fans coming back from the game, but the mood was very civil. I wound up chatting with some UW fans who were sitting near me. Meanwhile, the driver was giving everyone a free tour of LA, pointing out which movies were filmed in front of various sites as we made our way towards downtown.

Pleading the Fifth

Obsessive readers of this blog will remember the dream I had a few years ago where I found myself the newest justice on the United State Supreme Court. Jurisprudence was apparently on my mind last night again, as I dreamt that I was at a grocery store where the Governor of Rhode Island happened to be holding a public bill signing ceremony. I stuck around to watch, but before the ceremony started, a number of people got up and gave speeches. The first speaker began his speech by asking if anyone in the crowd could name the first five amendments in the Bill of Rights. The crowd went silent, until a guy in the crowd chimed in with the first two, said something plausible for the third (I had to look that one up while writing this post and apparently, my subconscious mind had forgotten it too), skipped the fourth, and then said that the fifth amendment gives Americans the right to deal arms. No one corrected him on this statement, but I thought about it some more after I woke up, and there is some logic to his statement. If the government suspects you of dealing arms illegally but they have no evidence against you, they can't compel you to testify against yourself, so in a way, the fifth amendment does give you the right to be an illegal arms dealer, as long as you don't get caught.

Hitchhiker's Guide to Social Networking

I've had hitchhiking on my mind recently. The protagonist in Into the Wild, the book I just finished reading, hitched his way across the country. I talked to some guys at the last Providence Geeks meeting who built software for managing point-to-point transportation networks. Their software wasn't designed for hitchhiking, of course, but it dawned on me that ride sharing is a possible application for online social networks. I'm not all that familiar with online social networking, so it's possible that people are already using it to share rides. I don't think the technology is quite ready, since if you really wanted to approximate hitchhiking on an online social network, you'd need a critical mass of users who are accessing the network from portable, GPS-enabled devices, and I don't think that such devices are common enough these days. Even if that was a reality, I'm not sure how willing people would be to offer rides to or accept rides from virtual friends, never mind virtual friends of virtual friends.

One of the things that fascinates me about hitchhiking is how it seems to have gone from an fairly common activity to something that few people would ever consider doing almost overnight. At least, that's my impression of it. My impression is probably not entirely correct, hitchhiking probably wasn't all that popular prior to it becoming unthinkable (my best guess is that this inflection occurred between 30 and 40 years ago) and it's probably more common today than I think it is. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if a confluence of factors including, but not limited to, pervasive online social networking, rising energy prices, concerns about pollution, and traffic congestion leads to a greater number of people sharing rides in the not-too-distant future.

The Road to the Superbowl

January 26, 2008 | 12:50 pm | Providence, RI

The Wealth of Nations

The guest on Wednesday's Daily Show episode that I commented on yesterday was satirist P.J. O'Rourke. He was talking about his new book, On the Wealth of Nations, which is part of a series called books that changed the world. The series features well-known authors who read famous books and then write about them. As you can probably guess, the famous book that O'Rourke wrote about was Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. I picked up The Wealth of Nations a couple months ago, but I was unable to get very far. The first problem was the edition that I picked up (Penguin Classics) had a 82 page introduction. No one who feels the need to write an 82 page introduction to any book (Andrew Skinner, in this case) should be in the business of writing introductions. I tried to slog my way through the intro because I was worried that I might find Smith's 230+ year old prose a little bit obtuse, but the actual book is an absolute page turner compared to the intro. Once I started getting into the book and the sheer joy of not trying to read my way through the introduction wore off, it began to get a little bit dry and pedantic, so I decided to cut my losses after about 60 pages. I don't know if I'll be reading O'Rourke's book, but it I don't see myself picking up The Wealth of Nations again anytime soon.

Cool as Ice

The whole "Ugly American" stereotype is unfortunate. It's unfortunate that a lot of people, particularly those in power, often live up to its worst expectations. It's also unfortunate that people in other countries use it as a basis for reflexive anti-American sentiment. For Americans with an ironic sense of humor, however, it can be a comedy goldmine. Check out this clip from last night's Daily Show for a case in point. I nearly lost it when Jason Jones changed the channel on the TV and it went to the Swedish Chef. The rest of the world is so much more familiar with America than we are with the rest of the world that I don't think it would be possible to make jokes like that in other countries.

On a similar note, I'm curious as to whether or not The Daily Show is popular in foreign countries. I visited the booth of an Australian software company at a software development conference that I attended last year. They had created a number of sample users for the application that they were demonstrating, and all of the sample users were past or present Daily Show correspondents. I thought about asking the developer if there were a lot of Daily Show fans in the land down under, but I forgot to. I could kind of see how it might have a loyal following in other English speaking countries, but I can't imagine a similar kind of show from Australia would have any success in the US.

Dutch Master

The Blueprint Project with Han Bennink
AS220 - Providence, RI
Tuesday, January 22nd

I was excited to learn that the legendary Dutch free jazz drummer Han Bennink was coming to town. I've gotten so used to not seeing much decent live music that I had nearly forgotten what it was like to so be excited for a concert. I had never seen Bennink play live before, and as I soon realized, I only have a couple of recordings that even feature his playing (Peter Bröztmann's Machine Gun and Alexander von Schilppenbach's The Living Music). Both of these records are nearly 40 years old, and while I'm sure I've heard examples of his modern work, nothing really sticks out in my mind.

Bennink was playing with a Boston-based group called The Blueprint Project that featured Jared Sims on reeds, Eric Hofbauer on guitar, and Tyson Rogers on keys. I had never heard of this band and wasn't familiar with any of its members. I felt that this group was at its best when it was playing relatively straight ahead. While I'm definitely more a fan of free playing, I didn't feel like they played as well free as they did in a more structured context.

It was hard to get a good read on Bennink's playing most of the night. Since the band played most of their numbers relatively straight, Bennink didn't have that much of an opportunity to really stretch out. He took a number of solos, all of which were pretty amazing. I was very impressed with the lyricism of his solo playing. I was also impressed with the way he was able to jump from loud to soft and/or free to swinging in an instant. His drumming is still as powerful as it was 40 years ago and he looks like he could have played all night.

I've always thought of Bennink as a "special effects" kind of drummer, a drummer who will bang together any two objects that might be able to make an interesting noise. Supposedly, he once set fire to his hi-hat on stage. There were no fires in this show, and other than splitting some drum sticks and playing with his feet a little bit, it was a pretty conventional performance. It was much more of a straight ahead performance than I had expected, but it was still a great joy to see Bennink play live.

The rest of the band put on a pretty good show as well. It wasn't an amazing show, but it wasn't bad either. One of my favorites tunes of the evening was a tribute to Herbie Nichols (called, surprisingly enough, Herbie Nichols). They played a really energetic Afro-Caribbean sounding number towards the end of the second set that really got the crowd going and included one of Bennink's best solos of the night. I was sure that they were going out on that note, until they went into another song. They definitely should have called it a night after that piece since there was nowhere to go from there, but all in all, it was a good show.

Whitest. Candidate. Ever.

I haven't said anything about the 2008 election yet, but after seeing this clip (courtesy of The Dose), I can no longer remain silent. It's a video of a Mitt Romney photo-op in Jacksonville where he, in an attempt to relate to the black urban youth of America, drops some lyrics from "Who Let the Dogs Out". Romney was definitely kicking it old school, since the oldest kids in the video couldn't have been more than 10 years old when the Baha Men were enjoying their 15 minutes of fame. Not to mention that I have serious doubts as to whether "Who Let the Dogs Out" was ever a very popular tune in the inner cities of America. In all seriousness though, it is mildly refreshing to see a Republican addressing a predominantly black audience.

Into the Wild

I finished reading Into the Wild today. It was a quick read and while it didn't shake me as much as Into Thin Air (also by Jon Krakauer), it was still a very moving story. Into the Wild is the story of Chis McCandless, a young man who turns his back on his family, friends, and society to live simple, nomadic life. His travels take him across the Western United States and finally, into the Alaskan interior, where he meets his demise. While I didn't necessarily identify with McCandless, I felt like I understood enough about where he was coming from and I think that most men (and perhaps most women) will find at least a few things in McCandless' story that will remind them of themselves at a certain age. I certainly shared his fascination with the American West and I too made my own solo trek across the country, albeit in a much more conventional manner. While I never sought out the ascetic lifestyle that he cultivated, I managed to approximate it on several occasions when my frequent moves between work, home, and school made the accumulation of basic home furnishings more trouble than it was worth.

I think that the book is a good read regardless of where you stand on McCandless' lifestyle, beliefs, or how you feel about his aptitude as an outdoorsman. I get upset by people who write angry letters to the editor after a publication does a feature about someone who has either gotten in trouble due to a string of bad decisions or has recently straightened their life back out after a string of bad choices. You have to have an astonishingly simple mind to believe that any writer who fails to condemn a man who has made some obviously bad choices is tacitly endorsing those choices. Furthermore, as Krakauer points out in the book, people take unreasonable risks all of the time, especially out in Alaska. It's only the ones who have the misfortune of dying that face the scrutiny of the public.

If you're illiterate or reading just isn't your thing, a film adaptation of the book came out last year. I haven't seen it yet, but it sounds like it came out pretty well.

Zodiac

We watched Zodiac last night. I happen to be a big fan of true crime stories, period dramas, and the city of San Francisco, so I knew that I was going to enjoy this film even if it wasn't all that good. Since I've already disclosed my biases, I'll rely on Michelle's surprisingly positive assessment of the movie to confirm that it is, in fact, a great film. If I have anything bad to say about the movie, it's that I found all of the main characters so likable. All true crime dramas have a fairly obvious villain, but I felt that there was an unrealistic lack of tension between the "good guys", which made it hard to play favorites. Of course, it's possible that this was a realistic portrayal of the three main characters.

Robert Graysmith (played by Jake Gyllenhaal) is a political cartoonist who becomes obsessed with trying to find the killer. Graysmith is bookish and socially awkward and appears at first much too naive to be a political cartoonist, but his intelligence and earnestness prove to be valuable assets as he investigates the killings. Robert Downey Jr. plays Paul Avery, a crime reporter at the same newspaper as Greysmith who is as cynical and flamboyant as Greysmith is earnest and austere. The two men, however, form an unlikely bond over their search for the killer. The third character is David Toschi (Mark Ruffalo), the San Francisco homicide detective who is investigating the case. He frequently crosses swords with Avery and Graysmith during the investigation, but the dust always settles pretty quickly.

The movie made me think about how the phenomenon of serial killing is a creation of mass media. Serial killers have probably been around forever, but without mass media to spread the news of their exploits, they don't really exist in the minds of the populace. It also made me think about how no serial killers that I know of have used new media to publicize themselves. A modern zodiac killer could have posted his ciphers to the internet directly instead of sending them to newspapers. All of this makes me think that our notion of how serial killers operate may be somewhat obsolete. In a world of blogging, camera phones, DNA forensics, and 24 hour news, can a killer really commit a string of murders while taunting the public with a string of threats, clues, and missives without getting captured fairly quickly?

The soundtrack was unremarkable, except for the opening scene which employed Donovan's Hurdy Gurdy Man in a way that will change forever the way I hear that song.

Get Out of Jail Free

They sent us home from work this afternoon due to this. Pretty freaky, and it could have been even more so had the projectile landed on a pedestrian or motorist. It hit the roof almost directly above me, and that was a little too close for my tastes, thank you very much. Note to self: Don't hire Cumberland Piping for next home improvement project.

More Great Moments in Blog Commenting History

When I saw that MDS wrote a post about the 20th anniversary of Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder's moronic statements about black athletes, I knew that some top-notch comments were going to come in. This post didn't generate the flood of comments that other posts that mention race, religion, or Heismann trophy voting have generated, but it did produce some comments that made Snyder's remarks look rational by comparison. You can check out the comments on the post if you want to get a better idea of the kind of bigotry and ignorance a post like this one attracts (warning: reading the comments may hurt your brain). Just as there are people who are quick to level the charge of racism against anyone who brings up the subject of race, there seems to be another group of people who are just as quick to dismiss any charges of racism regardless of how obviously racist the statements are. In general, intelligent discourse on anonymous blogs and message boards is the exception, not the rule, but even by those very low standards, the comments on this post were pretty bad.

A Streetcar Named Conspiracy

I was talking to a guy at tonight's Providence Geeks dinner who mentioned that he had pitched a project to General Motors a few years back that involved GM getting into the trolley business. The idea was that it would be a way for GM to show how innovative they are and how they can adapt and react to the changing world around them. Needless to say, GM didn't buy into this plan, but the person I was talking to said something that really caught my attention. He said that GM, in conjunction with Firestone and the Greyhound bus company, conspired to dismantle America's system of electric streetcars starting in the 1920s by buying the companies that operated streetcar lines, tearing up the tracks, and replacing them with dirty, unreliable bus service. This sounded a bit conspiracy-theoryish to me, so I did a little research when I got home. There's a fair number of lefty & environmentalists websites promoting this theory. Most of them seem to get their information from a PBS documentary from 1996 entitled Taken for a Ride.

I'd like to watch the documentary, but I'm fairly skeptical about the premise. For starters, streetcars really aren't a particularly great form of intra-city transportation. Boston still has several streetcar lines linked into its public transit system and everyone I've ever met who had to rely on one of those lines to get around town has had nothing but awful things to say about them. A streetcar is little more than a bus with a dedicated lane. There's no doubt that the arrival of affordable, mass-produced automobiles decreased American's desires to use public transit. We can debate whether or not that's a good thing, but it hardly represents a conspiracy. The most damning evidence I was able to find to counter this thesis comes from Cecil Adams.

While doing my crack online research, I also learned that the film Who Framed Roger Rabbit draws on this conspiracy theory. I saw the movie when it came out 20 years ago, but I had forgotten that part of the the story involved an unscrupulous highway company buying out a streetcar operator. I'm not surprised that I didn't pick up on this subplot as an 11 year old. Perhaps I should watch the movie again and see if there's anything else I missed.

Demetrius Ypsilanti

We've recently started playing pub quiz on Tuesday nights Ri Ra. There was a question about Michigan tonight, perhaps in honor of Michigan's presidential primary. The question was which Michigan city is named after a hero from Greece's war for independence against the Turks. We didn't get it, unfortunately. The answer, of course, is Ypsilanti, named for Demetrius Ypsilanti, which incidentally is one of the coolest names I've ever heard. I'm somewhat ashamed to admit that we guessed Okemos, since it sounds kind of like a Greek name (it's actually Native American). I'm also ashamed to admit that I translated Turks into Trojans while thinking about the question, since I assume that all trivia about Greece refers to ancient Greece, so I wasn't even thinking in the right time period.

Superok

I finally got around to viewing the latest installment of the never-ending saga of teenage outcasts trying to score at the last big party before the end of high school, also known as last summer's box office hit Superbad. There's a lot to like about it. For one, it features Michael Cera playing essentially the same character that he did in Arrested Development. I don't know if he's being typecast, but even if he is, I think it will still be a while before I'm sick of George Michael Bluth. Like all of Judd Apatow's work, there's some great dialog. A good rule of thumb that I have for measuring the quality of dialog-driven comedy is the number of scenes where characters are having a conversation about something that I've never heard anyone discuss before but as soon the conversation starts, I want to jump into the scene and start discussing it with them. Great dialog-drive humor is constructed out of observations that seem incorrect or ridiculous at first glance but unearth a truth about some part of human existence, preferably in the most juvenile or profane way possible. I can't think of any great examples of this technique from Superbad off the top of my head. I would like to memorize the monologue that Jonah Hill's character rattles off to his home ec teacher in the beginning of the movie and try it out at a local open mic night, however.

Hill had some great lines and pulled off some good physical comedy, but I thought his character was a just a bit to manic. That's a fairly minor detail, but the thing that really bothered me about the movie was how much time was devoted to the police officers and McLovin subplot. The concept was excellent but it wound up being a distraction after a while. It didn't help that the cops were completely nuts from the start. The movie mined most of the humor out of their unorthodox approach to law enforcement early, so it wasn't too hard to be shocked as they upped the ante as the night went on. If you can only see one of Apatow's films from last summer, I'd recommend Knocked Up, but either one will easily satisfy any juvenile humor fix you might be craving.

NeoOffice

I've been using OpenOffice for a number of years to handle what little MS Word and Excel document editing and creation I've had to do at home. I installed it when I switched to Mac just over a year ago, and while the applications work fine, they aren't native Mac applications so they don't have the standard Mac OS look & feel and don't work with standard Mac OS keyboard shortcuts. I recently heard rumors that OpenOffice had finally been ported to Mac OS, but I found no evidence of this on OpenOffice's somewhat confusing website. I did, however, find another open source project called NeoOffice that delivers on this promise. I've been using NeoOffice for a month or so. I'm by no means an MS Office power user, but NeoOffice has done everything I've needed it to do and it's so much nicer to use than OpenOffice since it feels like a native Mac application. If you're a Mac user whose frustrated with the current selection of commercially available office suites, you should check it out.

The Boredoms

I've always thought that Japanese experimental music might be a good fit for my musical tastes, but I've never really been able to get into it. Japan's a pretty weird place, and their experimental musicians tend to be even weirder. I heard some really cool stuff from a band out of Osaka called The Boredoms last night on WRIU. It was a 20+ minute long jam called Seadrum that featured a lot of throat singing on top of droning jazz/rock beat. It was so cool that I altered my route home so I could hear the end of the song. They're on the Warner Music label in Japan, so I don't know if this can really be considered Japanese experimental music, but their #2 myspace friend is Sun Ra, so that definitely gives them some good experimental music virtual street cred.

Top of the World

As you have probably heard, Sir Edmund Hillary, the first man to successfully summit Mt. Everest, had passed away. Anyone care to make a wager on who the subject of next week's Economist obituary is going to be? You can read some remembrances of the man here and here,. I never really gave Hillary or Everest much thought until a couple months ago, when I read Into Thin Air by Jon Krakauer. The book is a first person account of a 1996 Mt. Everest expedition that went horribly wrong and resulted in the deaths of eight of the climbers. The story really got to me in a way that few stories ever have. I'm still not really sure why. It's easy to get drawn into any well-written story, but there's more to it than just that. It also changed my perception of Mt. Everest. Before reading the book, I was of the opinion that while Hillary's ascent of the mountain was an incredible feat, nowadays, anyone with enough money and time on their hands could hire enough Sherpas and guides to get them to the top and back down again. While it's true that people who probably have no business climbing Everest are able to reach the top with the help of the guides and outfitters who lead expeditions to the top each year, they are still putting their lives at risk with every step they take at high altitude and as the book clearly illustrates, only a few things have to go wrong before a "leisurely" hike to the summit becomes a disaster. I'd say that the book has convinced me that climbing Mt. Everest isn't worth the risk, but I never really had any desire to climb it or any other stupendously tall mountain before reading it. Still, I can't help but admire the people like Hillary who threw caution to the wind and climbed to the top of the world.

Death of a Salaryman

At the rate I've been going, I should probably rename this blog "I read the Economist so you don't have to", but I couldn't resist sharing this tidbit from last week's article about the demise of the Japanese salaryman. I always knew that Japanese male office workers were expected to sacrifice their free time, families, ambition, and what little individuality Japanese society tolerates in exchange for a job and pension for life, but I had no idea how firmly entrenched this system was in Japan. According to the article, Japanese firms own resort properties across Japan where their employees receive generous discounts in an attempt to encourage them to spend what little vacation they actually take at the company resorts.

Good Old Smithy

I can't believe I missed this while writing my ode to Economist obituaries a couple days ago. Ian Smith, the former Prime Minister of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), passed away at the end of November. In case you've never heard of him, he was most famous (or infamous) for declaring independence from the crown in 1965 and turning his nation into a pariah state in an attempt to maintain white minority rule. I knew that Smith was getting up there in years and I was positive that he'd be memorialized in Economist upon his passing. I was correct, and his obituary is a masterpiece. Smith was one of the last remaining vestiges of the old British Empire, and his obituary pays homage to that while still condemning his misrule.

The obituary does not delve into speculation, nor should it, but it is interesting to think about how Zimbabwe would be today had it dismantled its de facto apartheid regime in 1965 as Britain wanted instead of waging a disastrous war in defense of a lost cause. Would it be like today's South Africa but with a one generation head start on democracy and racial and tribal reconciliation? Would it still be the basket case that it is today? The history of governance in post-colonial Africa is bleak enough that it's foolish to assume that Zimbabwe would definitely be in better shape today had Smith been willing to dismantle minority rule, but at the same time, it's hard to imagine how Zimbabwe could be in worse shape than it is today.

Bowling (for) Green

As I've mentioned before, I enter a friendly little college football bowl game betting pool every year. In my best finish in about 10 years, I managed to place third this year. I finished with an overall record of 26-6. I lost a 6 on UCLA and a 5 on Connecticut, two of my upset picks. My other four loses were on some relatively heavy favorites, a 28 on Boise State, a 16 on South Florida, a 26 on Florida and an 18 on Oklahoma. Still, that was good enough for 429 points overall, which actually put me in tie for second place that I lost due to the tiebreaker. I drastically underestimated the total number of points scored in the Rose Bowl. I actually computer my tiebreaker incorrectly, which I realized shortly after submitting my bracket. I thought that it was supposed to be the total points scored in the BCS championship game, not the Rose Bowl. As it turns out, my number (48) was way off the final scores of both games. Still, I think I would have put in a higher number had I read the instructions correctly. I figured it wouldn't matter since it had been so long since I finished in the money and I put very little effort into my picks this year that I was sure they couldn't be very good.

I'd spent the past few years trying to create some kind of formula that I could use to easily and accurately predict the outcomes of the bowl games. This year, I decided that I didn't want to put much effort into my picks, so I just went through the list of games and picked which team I thought would win based on my gut feeling. I then took that list and compared it to the current betting lines and adjusted some of my upset picks based on what the oddsmakers and ESPN had to say. I then put each pick into one of four groups based on my confidence and divided up the numbers. It probably took me an hour start to finish. I'll try the same thing next year and probably finish nowhere near the top 10, but for now, I can say it's a winning strategy.

Bug Off

Open source software is a concept that people have start getting familiar with over the past few years. Open source hardware is admittedly a more difficult proposition, but I've recently come across a couple of groups that are doing things with computer hardware that captures the spirit of open source software. The first is a local company called Modern Device Company, the brainchild of a RISD professor. They provide a simple and cheap microcontroller and development environment. I was unable to attend the recent Providence Geeks dinner where this technology was demoed, so I don't know much more about it. There's a short interview with the creator here as well as some links to related projects.

I read about a start-up called Bug Labs in the latest issue of Technology Review. They are doing a very similar thing, albeit in a more polished (and expensive) form. Their vision is a world where people are free to create their own purpose-built high-tech gadgets by stacking together a set of components and wiring them up using their software tools or by writing their own code.

It's all pretty interesting stuff. I don't have any insights to offer into what the first open source hardware killer app might by, but I think that this is something that is going to get bigger and I wouldn't be surprised if some forward-thinking gadget manufacturers start releasing versions of their products over the next few years that allow for end-user customization via a mixture of open source hardware and software components.

On Thin Ice

We went ice skating in Newport last night. It's been a couple years since I've last skated. It's good exercise and a fun time for a little while. After a half hour or so, skating around in circles get kind of boring. I think ice skating would be an ideal form of short-distance personal winter transportation, however. I'd definitely venture outside in the cold more often if I could glide to my destination. I believe that this was a fairly common practice in Amsterdam at some point in the past, but I'm not sure how common it is today. Perhaps I should go check it out.

Economist Obit Interview

Sorry to keep talking about the Economist, but I heard this piece on the radio yesterday morning and couldn't resist passing it along. It's an interview with Ann Wroe, the Economist's current obituary writer. It can be a real challenge to read an entire issue of the Economist cover-to-cover each week, but I always make sure I at least flip to the back and read the obituary. I find the form and subjects of the Economist's obits much more compelling than obituaries in other publications. They are long, at least by obituary standards, and they always manage to profile people who lived profoundly interesting lives. This week's subject is obviously Benazir Bhutto, but in weeks where no one's death is at the top of international headlines, they usually manage to find people who, to reuse a compliment from the world of art, were much more influential than well-known. Often times, I've either never heard of the person they are remembering or I have heard of the person but had no idea that he or she had passed away. Aviation pioneer Freddie Laker and avant garde composer Karlheinz Stockhausen are two relatively recent examples of the latter. The Economist's obituary page is neither afraid to talk about the flaws of those who have passed away, nor is it afraid to eulogize people whose passing has probably made the world a better place. Non-subscribers can read the past year's worth of obits for free online. Check it out sometime.

Chairman Bill

Last week's issue of the Economist featured a picture of Chairman Mao in a santa hat on its cover. Last week's issue of Sports Illustrated featured a picture of Bill Belichick in a santa hat on its cover. Coincidence?

Crossing the Bridge

December 26, 2007 | 4:46 pm | Detroit, MI (from level 5 of the MGM Grand Casino parking garage)

Mall Rats

The Economist's year-end issue has an interesting story about the history (and future) of shopping malls in America. I don't know if I agree with their assessment that the film Mallrats was a seminal testament to America's growing angst towards indoor shopping centers, but it's a good read nonetheless. According to the story, none of the scheduled new shopping center construction in the US in 2008 includes an indoor mall. I don't know if this has more to do with the uncertain economic outlook or American's distaste for enclosed shopping malls, but it's a surprising statistic either way.

The Year of Living Simply

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions. I usually make a couple generic ones, like exercise more or read more books. I never really give much though to how I might achieve my goals and often don't even write them down or tell anyone else about them, so it should come as no surprise that I don't really make good on my resolutions. Things were looking the same this year until I stumbled upon what I think is a good resolution. My resolution is to simplify. I tend to make a lot of things more difficult than they need to be and I'm also reluctant to invest any time in learning how to use things more efficiently. For example, most people would balk at having to use 10 keystrokes to save a file in a word processing program and search out some kind of shortcut. I would probably use the 10 keystroke method (while cursing it) for months before investing a couple of minutes to try and find a new way. My goal is to identify situations where I am wasting effort and see if I can find an easy way to make things easier. My first success came yesterday, when I finally decided to unsubscribe from all of the stupid e-mail lists that I've landed on by virtue of purchasing goods and services online. Instead of just deleting these unwanted e-mails, I spend the extra 30 seconds to click on the unsubscribe link. My biggest regrets at the end of each year are always the things that I never managed to get around to. By simplifying mundane, everyday tasks where possible, I should have more time and energy to devote to the things I really want to do.

Planet of the Legendary Soylent Omega Men

We saw I Am Legend yesterday. I was familiar with the premise going in, but I hadn't planned on seeing it at the theater, so I wasn't entirely sure what it was all about. None of us were too crazy about the film, but it did make me wonder how the storyline compares to other last-man-on-earth stories. The only other film I could think of was The Omega Man, which I have never seen despite having had it on my Netflix queue for about the past two years. As it turns out, The Omega Man was adapted from the same novel as I Am Legend. According to this post, I Am Legend takes numerous liberties with the original story, which is more of a Planet of the Apes kind of story than a traditional zombie movie. If you have a lot of free time on your hands, you may wish to view The Omega Man and The Last Man on Earth and read the book before going to see I Am Legend and decide which version you like best. If you're going to do all of that, you might as well watch Planet of the Apes and Soylent Green while you're at it to complete the Charlton Heston dystopic science fiction trifecta.

'Sup Skinny?

Ever want to know how you stack up to all of your neighbors from a demographic standpoint? You can head over to ZIPskinny and plug in your zip code to get an idea of how your lifestyle choices are bringing the statistics for your neighborhood up or down. I learned about this site while wandering around the Freep's website looking for a holiday gift guide. I wouldn't recommend giving anyone this URL as a Christmas present, but it's at least worth a look.

Market Correction

Saturday, November 24: We headed for over to old town this morning to check out the markets and the Yu Gardens. From the moment we left the hotel, it was obvious that it was a weekend, as the streets were much more crowded than they had been our previous two mornings in Shanghai. As we approached old town, we came upon a run-down section of town where modern buildings gave way to garbage-strewn vacant lots and squalid apartment buildings. On the streets of this ghost slum, a crowded market that covered every square foot of street frontage in this several square block area was doing a brisk business in everything from live poultry and fowl to 1990s era personal electronics. None of the vendors were set up in stalls, they simply spread there wares out across blankets on the street. This market catered to locals, obviously, so we were spared from the fake designer watch and handbag sales pitches that await western tourists on nearly every street corner as
we strolled through this impromptu flea market. The market slowly blended into a food market located in the residential area abuting the vacant lots, which led into the antiques market.

The antiques market definitely caters to tourists. While there may be some bona fide antiques for sale, most of the stores sell replicas of Chinese art, clothing, and ceramics. Prices generally aren't marked, so haggling is the name of the game. I wound up only making a single purchase. I picked up a travel wallet for 45 Yuan (about 6 USD). It was at one of the stores that actually had prices marked on their items and it was in the discount bin, so I didn't wind up bargaining for it. I was a little disappointed that I didn't get to make a deal, but I decided to put off the rest of my purchases until Beijing since I didn't find anything at the market that really caught my eye.

After making our purchases, we toured the Yu Gardens. The gardens were very similar to the gardens we toured in Suzhou yesterday. Like the garden in Suzhou, they hail from the Ming dynasty. It wasn't quite as nice, but it was still a relatively serene oasis in the heart of Shanghai.

We planned on sampling Shanghai's famous steamed buns and dumplings for lunch. As it turned out, this was a very popular lunch plan, and the line at the restaurant in the market was out the door and down the stairs. Fortunately, Chinese resturants are at least as efficient over here as they are back in the US, so we only had to wait for about half and hour to get a table and food started coming shortly thereafter. After throughly stuffing ourselves on delicious steamed dumplings, we walked back over to the Bund to take in the northern part of the road, which we had neglected on our first visit to the area on Thursday. We spotted the Goodyear Blimp flying up and down the river, which seemed odd to say the least. We stayed out until sunset to watch the buildings on the Bund and the skyscrapers across the river in Pudong light up the night sky. The light show in Pudong is somewhat disappointing, as a number of prominent buildings did not turn on their
lights until it was already completely dark. The iconic TV tower never got it lights fully going before we left shortly after 6 pm. We walked back to our hotel along East Nanjing Road, which turns into a pedestrian walkway lined with neon lights, stores, and masses of people that seems to run for mile until it ends at People's Park.

I think the reason it took me a while to warm up to Shanghai is I didn't really see the human face of it until today. I saw the architecture and the museums and the skyscapers, but it wasn't until today that I went into the market and saw people who weren't rushing to and from work. Shanghai is obviously much different than Hong Kong. It's a huge, sprawling city and I really only saw a small chunk of it. I was surprised by the relative lack of construction activity going on, at least in the areas that I saw. I was surprised to see vacant storefronts and vacant lots within spitting distance of shiny new skyscrapers. Not that the tourist areas of Shanghai are full of empty buildings or bereft of construction activity, but from the way China is portrayed in western media, I sometimes get the picture that the entire country is a construction site that stretches as far as the eye can see. We head up to Beijing tomorrow morning, so this may be my last blog
entry from China as I doubt that our hotel room in Beijing will have a computer.

Silk Road

We decided to take a day trip away from Shanghai today. So far, I've found Shanghai somewhat underwhelming so I was hoping that getting away from the city might help. We arrived at the Shanghai Rail Station around 9 am. The station did nothing to improve my opinion of Shanghai. It's a dilapadated example of typical soul-crushing socialist architecture. We purchased our tickets for the historic city of Suzhou in the equally depressing ticket office next door and waited for the train.

Suzhou is a city of 5.7 million people, so it's kind of small by Chinese standards. It prospered as a center of trade throughout most of Chinese Imperial history due to its strategic location on China's Grand Canal. It was at one time (and perhaps, still is) the center of China's silk industry. Marco Polo even visited Suzhou on his travels through Asia, so it's not exactly your typical provincial city.

The train ride out was interesting. The countryside between Shanghai and Suzhou, which is about 50 miles to the west, is sparse and comprised of open fields, dingy apartment blocks, factories, and brand new roadways completely devoid of traffic. The train station in Suzhou is much nicer than Shanghai's, but the surrounding area is not very attractive. Once we got to the main street, Remin Lu (People's Street), things started looking a little better.

While looking for the Silk Museum, we were approached by a man with barely serviceable English skills who was trying to get us to take a tour of a silk factory. I was going to pass on it, but Michelle was interested so we decided to check it out. Upon entering, we were met by a young man in a suit who spoke English well and gave us a tour of the factory. The tour was very interesting; we learned a little bit about the lifecycle of the silkworm, handled silkworm cocoons, watched the workers operate the machinery and learned about the two kinds of silk they processed in the factory. The tour was ultimately a sales pitch, as it wound up in their factory store, but it was a very informative and low pressure sales pitch, more like a tour of a Napa Valley vineyard than the street vendors waiting outside of every train station and tourist attraction to accost any white person they see. We wound up purchasing a silk quilt before leaving.

After touring the factory, we headed up the street for the Silk Museum. The museum, like most museums in China, was not very impressive or interesting. The highlight was the live silkworms munching on mulberry leaves that they had on display. After breezing through the museum, we were standing on the street contemplating where to get lunch when we were approached by two young women, presumably from Suzhou. One of them was holding a camera so we first though they wanted us to take a picture for them, but we quickly figured out that they wanted to have their picture taken with us. Alan and I posed for the photo while Michelle took a picture of the girl taking a picture of her friend with us. We definitely got a lot more looks from the locals walking the streets of Suzhou than we have gotten in Shanghai or Hong Kong. I'm sure most people in Suzhou have encountered westerns before, but it's probably still not that common to see us on the streets. We weren't
the only western tourists in town today, but there were very few tourists in town from the west or the east who weren't there with a tour group.

After lunch, we visited one of the many gardens for which Suzhou is famous. We went to the largest and, at least according to our guidebook, most impressive - The Humble Administrator's Garden. The garden was quite nice, albeit quite crowded. Still, it was large enough that we occasionally had a small corner of it to ourselves, which was a welcome respite from the crowds and noise that have pervaded nearly every moment of our trip so far.

We then trudged our way back to the train station. When we arrived at 5pm, it was jam packed. The area outside of the station had the aura of a concert or some sort of large outdoor festival, with people gathered into small groups eating, talking, and playing games. We boarded the fast train at 6pm and were back in Shanghai by 6:30. We enjoyed another night of excellent Shanghainese cuisine at a restaurant called 1221. Unlike Wednesday's restaurant, this place was packed, mostly with expats and western tourists, but the food was excellent. After dinner drinks at an expat bar were a fitting end to my favorite day in (and around) Shanghai so far.

Shanghai Nights

Wednesday, November 21, 2007: We left Hong Kong this morning. We took an express bus to the airport but we arrived a little later than we had planned due to heavy traffic. Still, we managed to check in, cash in the remaining balance on our Octopus cards (Hong Kong public transit cards), and exchange our leftover Hong Kong dollars for Chinese Yuan before boarding our flight. We weren't able to grab breakfast, but since we're in a part of the world where airlines still believe in serving meals on two-hour flights, that wasn't too big of a problem. Our two-hour flight wound up taking about three and a half hours. We were handed a slip of paper after boarding informing us that flights to China may be delayed without notice due to unexpected and unknowable Chinese ATC directives. Our flight wound up sitting on the ground for about 45 minutes due to one of these delays. Once we reached Shanghai, we were put into a holding pattern for about half and hour, and
then we had to taxi for what felt like at least 15 minutes. We finally parked on the apron and climbed down a flight of airstairs before boarding a bus to the terminal. This is apparently not usual at Pudong; there were at least 20 other airplanes parked on the airfield away from gates.

The differences between Hong Kong and mainland China are immediately visible upon arriving in Shanghai. There is a general drabness that pervaded the entire airport in Shanghai. Of course, few airports can compare to Hong Kong's, so that might not be a fair comparison. Pudong does feel a bit like old Detroit Metro in places. The bilingual signage that pervades in Hong Kong is nearly absent in Shanghai. This is understandable, of course, but I have still been a bit surprised. I have read that Beijing is pushing to get more bilingual singage in place for the Olympics, so perhaps it will be more like Hong Kong in that respect. The second obvious difference, which became visible on the eight-minute maglev train ride from the airport to the metro, is that mainland China is a lot larger than Hong Kong. Instead of high-rises as far as the eye can see, it's full of fields, forests, and modest apartment blocks until you reach the edge of the city, where the
buildings begin to rise, but the heights and densities never approach the scale of Hong Kong.

After checking into our hotel, we started walking over to the French Concession. Shanghai and Hong Kong are both fairly young cities in terms of their history and development, but Shanghai is the younger of the two. With the exception of the transit system, Shanghai's infrastructure definitely looks newer than Hong Kong's. Everything else, however, looks and feels older. The roads are jammed with people on bicycles and mopeds. Shanghai has its French Concession and art deco architecture while Hong Kong has demolished most of its historical structures.

We dined on some delicious Shanghainese food at the Restaurant Art Salon, a restaurant where all of the decorations and furiture are available for purchase. We were the only patrons in the restaurant, but the food was very good. We then headed over to the Blue Frog, a western-style chain of pub/club bars that caters to out-of-towners and ex-pats, I assume. After a couple pints of Tiger, we decided to call it a night and head back home.

Lonely Continent

If you've ever looked in the travel section at your local library or bookstore, you are probably familiar with Lonely Planet series of guidebooks. Unlike some travel guides that only focus on the most popular travel destinations, Lonely Planet tries to provide guidance to all travelers, perhaps to a fault. I remember flipping through their write-up of Kinshasa a while back, which offered many useful pieces of advice, such as how much to bribe the various characters you were likely to encounter on your way from the airport to the hotel and the hours of day during which it may be safe to leave the hotel. In spite of this, I was still somewhat shocked to find a copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to Antarctica when I was at the bookstore last week. According to this this article, Antarctic tourism is exploding, with an estimated 28,000 visitors in 2006. That's a lot more that I had figured, but unless a fairly large percentage of those visitors are buying a copy of the Lonely Planet's guide to Antarctica, I doubt it's a moneymaker. If nothing else, it cements their reputation as the go-to source for travel information for obscure destinations (at least, for Western, English-speaking travelers). I'm kind of surprised they haven't enlisted one of the Apollo astronauts to write a Lonely Planet guidebook for the Moon.

Links for People Who Enjoy Wasting Time

This post let me to this site. I scored a 78% on Cities of Rhode Island quiz, which is a decent score for a non-native, I think. I also tried the World Leaders quiz. I scored a 98%, but it took me about three minutes. The quiz is a bit out-of-date, showing the former Nigerian, British and French heads of state. They did manage to update Japan, whose Prime Minister has been on the job for just over a month.

I also found this site, which ranks the top 101 cities in the US according to all kinds of different criteria. Prepare to waste time.

Dog Eat Dog

I just watched Dog Day Afternoon for the first time. I'm not much of a film critic, but I know what I like, and I really liked this movie. I'm obviously not the first person to express this sentiment, but I felt it was worth mentioning since it's been a while since I was that impressed with a movie. I've watched a number of films from Hollywood's so-called second golden age, and while I've appreciated almost all of them, I don't think I've ever enjoyed one as thoroughly as I enjoyed "Dog Day Afternoon". Perhaps Taxi Driver, but I watched that one was back when I was an angry teenager, so it may have seemed more poignant.

I'm not going to review the movie, but I will offer one observation. I found the depiction of the crowd and media circus surrounding the standoff to be one of the most interesting aspects of the film, both in the way that it reflected the spirit of the times and how it made me think about a similar situation would be depicted in the media today.

Panorama-rama

Panoramic shots are one of my favorite features of digital photography. Here's a panorama I took on our hike up Mt. Monadnock. It wasn't a great day for photography, but the panorama still looks nice.



We visited Paine Field in Everett, WA while we were out in Seattle. Paine Field is home to one of the two factories in the Seattle area where Boeing manufactures commercial airliners. Paine Field is home to Boeing's widebody assembly lines. They are currently churning out 747s and 777s and will soon be building 787s there. The factory tour left a lot to be desired. It was fairly short and didn't really get into too much detail. We weren't able to get very close to any of the aircraft either. I did snap a pretty neat panoramic shot of the field, however. The composite image shown below is made up of eight separate photographs. The aircraft visible, from left to right, are an unmarked 777, the modified 747 DreamLifter that is used for ferrying parts for the 787 from various assembly lines around the world to the facility in Everett for final assembly, two Air India 777s, a Cathay Pacific 777, three more unmarked 777s, a 737 (I think), and a China Cargo 747 freighter.

Summer Reading

Astute readers will notice a new set of links on the right-hand side of the page. I dropped in a widget from Google Reader that includes links to stories from around the web that I have decided are worth reading.

Pumpkin Cutter

Kudos bar to Michelle for the great job she did on the jack-o-lantern yesterday. She usually sweet talks me into carving the gourd by praising my carving skills, but I think this picture shows where the real pumpkin carving talent lies in this household.